Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Bodhisattva. This is the next word, is one who has awakened and who has given everything to society. We are born into this world and there are many ways to live in this world, usually most people live for themselves, maybe for their families, this is not bad but being full of those things only can’t be called a very high level way of living. If we go a little higher in levels of ways to live we know that we can work for ourselves and for others to be happy as well. We allow others as well as ourselves to have rights, give them respect, we are polite, we are careful… on what we do and most intelligent people live in this way, but is that all there is to being alive?

One other way is that world of religion, like the mother who works for her child without thinking of herself whatsoever with everything she has, only working for the peace of all beings is what Avalokitesvara is representing. This way of living is the most difficult and the most high level, but this is the vow of the Buddha or the Bodhisattva, to build a peaceful world for everyone to live in and to give everything to the doing of it, this is the Buddha’s vow and this is why they’ve come into this world, not because they have some special power, we all have problems and we do mistaken things, but we do have the same vow as the Buddha, this is what is high level.’ (On The Heart Sutra)